Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

sound around her. Pushing her, propelling her up.
    Into the light. Past the tiers of boxes and their glittering wall sconces. Past the gilt-and-crystal chandelier she had always loved so much. Past the winged angels frescoed on the sky-blue ceiling. She departed the world from the theater that she loved so well, the place that would forever hold a part of her soul.
    * * *
     
    How long Brandon had been lying there, he didn’t know.
    He awoke to the horrific sound of a ghost screaming in his ear.
    When his head finally began to clear and he sat up, she was gone.
    The demoness was nowhere to be seen.
    But she hadn’t killed him, after all. Hadn’t injected him with the special concoction that could have ended his existence on earth, could have taken away his immortality and wiped out his physical existence.
    What was in that syringe? Cyanide? Strychnine?
    He didn’t know. But where she had gone, he knew instantly.
    He rubbed the side of his neck. Checked his limbs. With an effort that would have rivaled any Herculean act, he climbed to his feet.
    And went to find her.

Chapter Sixteen
     
    F lames licked the night sky. Playing a dangerous game of tag with the buildings around Ca’ Rossetti, fire streamed out the windows of the palazzo, threatening to catch the walls and roofs of neighboring palaces. Thick smoke and the smell of burning hung in the still air. The sound of crackling sent a cold sweat down Luciana’s exposed back.
    She slipped to her knees, barely conscious of Massimo taking the wheel of the boat as she collapsed, clinging to the side of it. And then she was over the side of the boat, leaping onto the pavement.
    She ran into the house.
    The bottom floor had not yet begun to burn—the fire must have started upstairs. Perhaps there was still some way to stop it, she thought wildly.
    But how?
    Then she felt the heat billowing down the staircase, the flames still out of view but so hot it was like the inside of a wood oven. The palazzo was beyond saving, she knew. The only thing she could do was to take what she could carry and run.
    But what to take?
    Her mother’s jewelry lay broken and scattered on the floor of the bedroom upstairs. The Tiepolos and Tintorettos were huge canvases, too large for her to pry off the wall by herself and carry outside.
    And more precious than any single item of art or jewelry was the palace itself…the frescoes she had painstakingly and lovingly restored, the plasters and the stonework repaired by the teams of artisans she had brought in, the delicate applications of gilt on the front facade…
    There was no way to save it all…no way…
    She charged up the stairs, heedless of the heat. Like an inferno. Like the flames of hell.
    Every which way she turned, she did not know what to save, how to save anything.
    No single item could preserve the memory of her family’s lost legacy.
    Pushing open the door to her workroom, she saw the vials of poison she had so painstakingly created, lined up on the table. She grabbed a fistful of them.
    The flames came barreling their way down the hallway, roaring toward her.
    She no longer wanted to be a part of this world.
    It had beaten her. She sank to her knees, ashamed of herself. Ashamed that the only thing she thought to save when her ancestral home was burning was the most evil thing in it, apart from herself.
    That her first and only impulse was to grab the most important thing to her.
    Poison.
    With all the strength she had left in her, she crawled toward the fire.
    Let it take me.
    And then she was pulled by a force greater than anything earthly. Not the fire. Not the heat.
    But him.
    Through the flames he emerged, big and brash and fearless as ever.
    When she saw him, she knew beyond a doubt why he had been resurrected as a Guardian. The fact that he would risk himself for a woman who had just shot him full of cyanide and left him to suffer…. It made her want to weep, right there in the middle of the fire.
    “There’s only one way out,” he shouted over the roar of flames, his voice, roughened by smoke, ground in her ear. “You’ve got to come with me.”
    She knelt there, paralyzed. What would happen if she simply gave herself over to him?
    Disaster.
    His fingers pried her hand open, forcing her to release the vials of poison she still clutched. And then arms were clamping around her, and a single word, an order. “Come!”
    He dragged her back toward the stairs, but they were blocked. No way to get down. The only